Light & Leafy

My neglected shaman is finally getting some love and attention! Honestly, the new dungeon finder and disenchant options are giving her a new life (and actually allowing me to enchant her gear afforadably!).
 
Sairyn was my only real alt in the Burning Crusade. I leveled her to 70, and then abandoned her on Lethon when Edainne switched realms. Around the expansion’s release (once my old guild on Lethon switched servers, as well), I finally got around to transferring Sairyn and convincing the boyfriend to let me level with his boomkin. Sairyn had never gotten out of her Outlands questing blues and greens, so it was easy to gear her up everywhere we went. She hit 80, and was back-burnered again so I could focus on growing my tree.

Finally, Sairyn is getting the attention she always deserved. I’ve collected a ton of badges (enough to buy a few pieces of her tier 9 set), only I’ve noticed a small problem.

You see, Sairyn was always intended to be a dps’er. Before dual-specs, she was an enhancement shaman. Once Wrath came around, she was elemental, with a resto off-spec in case I wanted to try healing on her (this is before I made up my mind that I wanted one of each healing spec/class).

Now, I’m not a particularly great dps, but I still wanted to keep her primarily as a pew-pewer. With the new LFD system, I’m given a choice : I can either group up as a healer and get groups quickly, or I can stand in the queue for 15+ minutes as a pure dps. Clearly, I’ve been choosing the former. And I’ve realized two things:

1. I like healing on the class I used to scorn as healers (seriously, I swore she’d never have a resto spec and that 3 heals were booorring).
2. I’m a much more effective healer than I am a dps’er.

I think my problem is I want her to have both a rocking dps set and a rocking resto set, but I’m ashamed to admit it. She was my ticket out of people making fun of me for always playing a healer (“Look! She’s elemental! I really am not a one trick pony! Honest..“).

The turning point on all this, was this past Monday night, when her random heroic daily dungeon was Halls of Reflection. I went in scared shitless, thinking that I wouldn’t be able to handle the pressure in that instance, especially since I had trouble on Eda and Fluffi (even though I’m really confident when it comes to healing on my priest and my druid). We breezed through it. The tank and dps even complemented my healing, which honestly shocked me. This might be a thought for a later post, but it amazes me that I did so much better on the character I was least experienced playing as healer.

So, my little shaman, I shall heal on you. And when I have guild groups, I shall practice dpsing (and I’ll play on the practice dummies because I find that oddly soothing). And you will have triumph gear for both your resto and elemental set. Because despite all the ambivalence I used to carry for you, I am now in love with your lava bursts and chain heals.

Project for tonight/tomorrow: Take another look at her resto spec and see if it’s how I think it should be, and set up her glyphs so they’re competitive and not just whatever I happened to have lying about.